Other things being equal, larger small businesses have greater IT needs, more at stake, and larger IT budgets.

The reason that a small company’s size is so important is because in order for a small business to (a) need, and (b) afford any kind of regularly scheduled, outsourced services from a local IT consulting business, that small business generally needs to have at least 5 employees and at least $1,000,0000 in annual revenue, or your local currency equivalent.

How Many Potential Clients are There in Your Local Market?

If you want to research how many small businesses in your local area meet these parameters, for the purposes of preparing a business plan or marketing plan, you can use some of the more popular mailing list compilers to do very quick, free market research.

You can actually watch either or both of these YouTube screencasts to walk through how to use these tools. See

Why B2B Computer Repair is Very Different than B2B IT Consulting

Bear in mind, in the USA, when a small business is spending $1,000+/month ($12,000+/year) on outsourced IT consulting business services, these purchase decisions are usually not impulse-buys.

It’s not like someone walking into the local office supply superstore and visiting their computer repair department to get a really stubborn virus removed from their teenager’s laptop for $49.

Conversely, it’s pretty far-fetched to imagine the office manager of a health club, moving company, or law office disconnecting their 20+ workstations and two servers and dragging the equipment all down to the local computer repair business. That’s why there’s a distinctly different operating model for both retail computer repair businesses and more B2B-focused IT consulting businesses. To learn how to compete head-to-head against national chains in the computer repair space, reference these two following two articles:

Estimating the Sales Cycle Length

Getting back to your original question though, of how much time on average it takes to go from 100% full-throttle launch of a new IT consulting business, to running smoothly with a good amount of clients and residual income, sales cycles can vary by industry and seasonal factors.

But for a rough, general, back-of-the-napkin estimate, expect sales cycles to range from 3-12 months, depending on your targeting, the sophistication of your campaigns, and the effectiveness of your follow-up and lead nurturing activities.

Keyword Tags:
IT consulting business
starting up
opening
running
clients
residual income
computer repair
small business

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The Computer Consulting Business Tips blog covers best practices for owning and operating a successful computer consulting ...
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The Computer Consulting Business Tips blog covers best practices for owning and operating a successful computer consulting business. Topics include attracting clients, managing the sales process, engaging with new customers, project management, support agreements, partnering, and subcontracting.
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